Household welfare implications of sustainable land management practices among smallholder farmers in Ghana

Gazali Issahaku and Awudu Abdulai

Land Use Policy, 2020, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: This study employs farm household data to examine the impact of adoption of sustainable land management practices on consumption and poverty outcomes using multivalued treatment effects approaches. The generalized propensity score approach was employed to account for selectivity bias due to observed characteristics among households. Using a doubly robust treatment effects estimator, we found that increasing intensity of adoption improved per capita consumption expenditure, reduced poverty headcount and poverty gap among farm households. The results of the multivalued treatment effects approach revealed significant differences between adopters of different adoption intensities, a finding that is not possible with binary treatment effect approaches. The findings also revealed that the average treatment effect of moving from low intensity to high intensity adoption levels differed across quantiles of per capita consumption. We also use a dose-response function to demonstrate that the treatment effect of intensity of adoption on per capita consumption and poverty outcomes is nonlinear, with optimal adoption level occurring between 60–70 % of adoption intensity dose. It is therefore recommended that initial government support in sustainable land management is necessary to sustain and upscale individual household efforts towards investment in sustainable land management.

Keywords: Sustainable land management; Household welfare; Multivalued treatment effect; Generalized propensity scores; Dose-response functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:94:y:2020:i:c:s0264837718318246

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104502

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